


this is where the summer ends

by 26miledrive



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26miledrive/pseuds/26miledrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his first pre-season game against the Habs in Halifax, Ference and Boychuk pay Pouliot a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is where the summer ends

**this is where the summer ends**

The knock on his door comes around ten at night after the Bruins defeat Montreal in Halifax, and Benoit is still feeling the effects of the adrenaline from the game, hasn’t been able to sit still since he got back to his room. The idea of a distraction is more than welcome, but he isn’t sure what to think when he sees who’s on the other side of the door.

“We came by to celebrate,” Ference says, holding up a bottle of something wrapped in a brown paper bag. “Tradition, you know, when you play your old team for the first time.”

“It counts in pre-season, eh?” Benoit asks, tension in his shoulders, stepping away from the door so they can come in. There’s no way he can claim he’s tired or refuse the company, and he’s not sure he wants to, exactly -- it’s just that these are the moments he’s unsure of, the off-ice ones where they don’t wear the same colors and they’re not playing hockey.

The Bruins are a tight-knit group, as would be expected from a Stanley Cup Championship team without any significant roster changes. Benoit wants to get along with his teammates and play hockey, wants to exorcise the demons of _wasted potential_ and _biggest disappointment_ that have followed him from the Wild to the Canadiens, but he knows both of those things will take time to accomplish.

Ference leans against the wall, deceptively relaxed, but there’s a odd tension in the way he’s standing, in the sharpness of his gaze. “It always counts, Pouliot. Especially when it’s the Habs. Right, Boychuk?”

“Right.”

Benoit doesn’t know what to say, feels like he’s the punchline to a joke he doesn’t understand. “Well, then. Let’s celebrate.”

If his enthusiasm for that idea is a touch disingenuous, the smiles he receives in return are the same -- so maybe they’re even.

* * *  
It starts off all right, nothing too crazy or out of hand -- there’s no trip to the tattoo shop, nothing like that. They sit around and drink from the bottle Ference brought, which turns out to be Jack Daniels, and watch the pre-season recaps on _Sportscentre_.

As far as hazing goes, it’s pretty tame. The drunker he gets, the more Benoit starts to think the Big, Bad Bruins are a lot less _Bad_ than their reputation -- fuck, he’s about to _suggest_ the tattoo thing himself, see if he can convince tough-guy Ference to go with a Paul Simon lyric or something -- when Ference exchanges a look with Boychuk, some signal clearly passing between them. They’re sitting on the end of Benoit’s bed, evenly spaced, and then Boychuk gets up and turns off the television, and Ference takes the bottle out of Benoit’s hand and sets it on the bedside table.

The tension settled into a low buzz as they drank together, an undercurrent that arcs with sudden intensity when the room is plunged into silence. Benoit feels it shiver over him, electric and pulsing with a sharp heat, even through the honeyed-haze of the liquor. He feels Ference moving behind him, tugging at his arms and pulling him so he’s lying flat on his back, stretched out length-wise on the bed, Ference’s fingers pressing his wrists into the mattress to hold him still.

“What?” Benoit says, breaking the silence for no reason other than it feels oppressive -- heavy like the white duvet beneath him, suffocating and warm.

Ference’s fingers rub down his wrists, his arms. “Told you. We’re celebrating.”

Benoit tips his head back and looks up, and there’s nothing disingenuous about the smile Ference is giving him anymore. Benoit’s voice catches, he barely recognizes it when he speaks. “Celebrating what, _ami_?”

“That you’re one of us, now.” Ference’s fingers tighten and he leans down, breath spilling warm and whiskey-tinted over Benoit’s mouth. “That you’re _ours_.”

Benoit doesn’t pull away but he doesn’t stay still, either; he shifts restlessly and tries to think of what to say, exhales an _oh_ on a rough breath of air that doesn’t sound nearly as surprised as it should. He stops moving completely when Ference lowers his mouth and kisses him -- he’s flashing cold and hot in turn and his thoughts are a jumbled, tangled mess of French, warning and encouragement all mixed up together. This feels good but it also feels like a trick, like some kind of trap designed to humiliate him.

Ference pulls back and Benoit hurries to take a breath, stolen in an instant when Boychuk climbs on the bed and straddles him, pushes his hands beneath Benoit’s shirt. Benoit arches up against him with a hard thrust of his hips before he thinks maybe he shouldn’t do that and tries to protest, makes a noise he hopes sounds offended and disgusted instead of turned on and interested. It doesn’t work -- Ference’s laugh catches at the edge of his attention, warm with amusement.

“You don’t have to do that,” Boychuk says, and he moves, too -- grinds down hard and Benoit’s inner monologue switches from panicked to helpful, teasing with ideas about how to make this better, how to move harder, how to lean his head back and kiss Ference like he wanted to a moment ago. “I mean, unless you really aren’t into it, but it sure seems like you’re into it.” Boychuk punctuates this by moving against Benoit again, harder this time, pushing his shirt up and digging his fingers into the tensed, tight muscles of Benoit’s shoulders. He leans down, eyes liquor-bright-blue, the hard grind of his hips getting sounds from Benoit that he’s barely aware he’s making. “Me and Ferry think we should clear something up. Remember that cheap hit you threw at me in April?”

The question isn’t entirely unexpected, but he never thought it would come up quite like this. “ _Oui_ , I -- I remember.” The media has been more concerned with his lackluster fight with Krejci than that little incident in the playoffs, the one that had sparked Jack Edwards’ infamous comments about what a disappointment he was, along with Andrew Ference’s fists. “I didn’t --”

The rest of that sentence is strangled by a moan when Boychuk slaps him on the mouth. “Shut the fuck up. Don’t you dare fucking tell me you didn’t do it on purpose or that you didn’t _mean to hurt me_. Your goddamn feet left the ice, Pouliot. _You hit me in the head with your elbow_ , fucker.”

The pain from Boychuk’s hit is like a lit match, turning low flares of heat into fire -- Benoit can’t say he’s ever been smacked in the mouth before but it’s really doing it for him, and leave it to a Bruin to make him realize he likes that kind of thing. Ference leans down and _bites_ at his mouth, sore and swollen from Boychuk’s slap. “What were you going to say, Pouliot?”

 _I didn’t mean to hurt you, I didn’t do it on purpose_ is exactly what Benoit planned on saying, but he kisses Ference instead, arching up off the bed and pressing harder against Boychuk. For the first time he says out loud what he’s never quite admitted to himself, even in the hidden, silent safety of his own thoughts. “I didn’t like how it felt.”

“How what felt?” Ference asks against his mouth, teeth dragging at his sore lip, sucking hard.

“Being a disappointment.” He looks up at Boychuk, apologetic and still breathing hard, exhaling a breath and feeling something loosen in his chest. “I shouldn’t have done it. It’s not your fault I’m a failure. I just wanted to... _do_ something for once. Even if it wasn’t...something good.”

Ference nods, sits back, and brushes two fingers over Benoit’s mouth, back and forth. “You shouldn’t have done it, no. And Boych is my teammate, so that’s why I went after you. We do that here. And if anyone goes after _you_ , now, we’ll take care of it. And you’re not a failure, by the way. You know why?” Ference slides his fingers in Benoit’s mouth and he sucks on them, rubs his tongue suggestively and bites gently at the tips.

“ _Non_ ,” Benoit murmurs around his fingers, watching Ference. “Why?”

“Tell him, Johnny.”

Ference pulls his fingers out of his mouth and Boychuk slaps him again, harder than before, gets another noise out of Benoit that’s half-pain, half-pleasure. “Because you’re a fucking Bruin, and we’re not failures. So stop thinking that, stop _saying_ it, and definitely stop believing it -- got it?”

There’s something about Boychuk hitting him with that easy-going smile and those fox-sly eyes of his that Pouliot finds dangerously attractive, and it isn’t just the Jack Daniels or how turned on he is. It’s the same sort of attraction he’s always felt towards hockey; captivated by the promise of all that violence and intensity, shining like caught diamonds beneath the ice. “ _Oui_. Yes.”

Boychuk leans down and kisses him -- it’s different than it was with Ference, but Benoit can’t figure out exactly why at the moment, just knows that it is. “Maybe you get it, maybe you don’t. But you will. It’s just the pre-season. We’ve got time. Now shut up so we can all get off, here, me and Ferry gotta play tomorrow.”

There’s not a lot left to say after that -- Benoit’s hands are suddenly free, he’s grabbing at Boychuk’s hips and pulling him down harder and harder, thrusting up violently against him while Ference murmurs encouragements -- _fuck, harder, that’s it_ \-- making noises that suggest he’s doing more than just watching. When Boychuk leans down and bites him on the neck, saying something that sounds an awful lot like _good enough_ , Benoit arches up hard and comes with a sharp gasp -- pleasure is a a drenching wave that washes over him and leaves him shaking, panting for breath, aware of Boychuk thrusting erratically against him and biting his shoulder hard enough to bruise.

They’re quiet for a few minutes, Boychuk still sprawled on Benoit while he catches his breath, and that’s dangerously comforting in a way that it probably shouldn’t be. When Boychuk moves off of him, Benoit clears his throat and says without thinking, “When I got to Montreal from Minnesota, they just took me to dinner,” which makes Boychuk and Ference crack up laughing.

“What’s that say about us, eh?” Boychuk asks Ference, sitting on the bed now, and he’s got a hand resting in the center of Benoit’s chest, possessive and heavy and not at all unwelcome.

Ference looks at the two of them, and he looks like he’s going to say something about it, but instead he just shrugs, holds his hand out for the bottle of Jack next to Boychuk on the table. “That we’re easy?”

“Or we’re cheap,” Benoit adds, and the slur in his words is from tiredness and post-sex satisfaction, and maybe a little of Jack, and maybe the way Boychuk smiles at him when he says _we_.

“If we were cheap, this would be like, _Kentucky Tavern_ or something,” Boychuk informs him, picking up the bottle of Jack from the table. “You’re French so we figured we should go for the fancy stuff.”

That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever -- and he’s French- _Canadian_ \-- but Benoit lets it go, puts an arm behind his head and closes his eyes. He should probably shower, but he doesn’t want to move. It’s been a long day, a long _week_ , and he hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to relax. “ _Merci, amis_. For the, ah...pep talk.”

“No problem. Ferry’s totally trying to earn that _A_ of Recchi’s by helping out the new guys.”

Ference’s voice is dry, amused. “Or I’m helping you out, Boych, you’re the one who said he was hot.”

Boychuk clears his throat, sounding vaguely embarrassed. “Go recycle something, Captain Planet. I got this.”

“All right. If you’re sure. Don’t stay up too late, we got Habs to knock around tomorrow.”

Benoit hears Ference leave the room, the door closing softly behind him as he leaves the two of them alone. Boychuk’s hand is still on his chest. He should get up, shower, find out exactly what Ference meant with that _you’re the one who said he was hot_. But for the moment he lays there, content, and for the first time really does believe what he’s been saying all along -- that this new beginning is exactly the chance he needs for redemption, to finally become the player everyone thought he’d be when he was drafted.

Also, if the way Boychuk is kissing him is any indication, it looks like he might get laid a lot. And that’s good, too.


End file.
